Tanikit--Oy. I am not looking forward to the downside of preschool which DD starts this Fall. We put her in a multi-age class room since DD doesn't seem to know what to do with her peers. But I bet your DD would be giving you a hard time no matter what--smart kids find a way ime--she's just a bit more sophisticated about it now that she's in school

@MJB--How is Charlotte's Web going? I loved that book when I was a kid.

So here's the list of words DD is reading so far (started this week)-I'm trying to keep track for her baby book:

Ten
Cat
Dog
Frog
Box
Bug
Zoo

And a valiant attempt at reading the word three but she doesn't really know her blends yet. I'm trying to figure out what to do on that front. Do I teach them to her or just let it go for now? But since she's trying for those words, I guess I should give her the tools???

I don't feel like I know the balance yet between meeting her where she's at vs. pushing. I don't want to push!

Hmmm.....Tyr is 3y 5m now
We have suspected for a while that he could read some words....Asked outright he wouldn't know it but he would randomly say words he saw. Now he is sounding out words. His favourite movies are the High School Musicals...we put on the captions for him and now he is singing almost all the words perfectly. I think having captions on helps him quite a lot with recognizing the words they are saying/singing.

For any gamers out there: He is mastering the Kingdom of the Kelflings. On his ITouch he plays 2 player Tap-Tap Revoloution....and plays it really well....it is crazy as both thumbs are doing different patterns all the time. He plays Rock Band with us and does either the Drums or Guitar on Easy and gets about 90% everytime!

His math concepts are growing. An example: Me: Ok you can chose one book tonight to read because I am working tomorrow. Him: No, how about 5 books? Me: no only one. Him: how about 1 + 4? Me: no only 1 +0. Him: How about 4+5 take away 4? Me: Laughing now....sorry only one book but that is very clever.

I wasn't 100% sure till now, but now I'm sure. DS can read silently. We were at the local zoo today he looked at the sign for a few minutes then told me what it meant instead of a word for word reading of what it said.

Timmy's Mommy WARNINGyslexic typing with help of preschooler, beware of typos

Oldest DS just turned 11. He completed the Spring Festival piece he composed for the string orchestra at his school and is off to composing a string trio on nature themes for Earth Day. He is working like crazy polishing the concerto he is scheduled to perform next weekend with his orchestra... it is sounding better every day. He also decided to learn the prelude to the second Bach suite, and after 2 weeks of work on it, you can see him play it here:http://www.youtube.com/user/fycfung#p/a/u/0/mpiBSrm7zvQ

My other kids have enjoyed the week off from school. Oldest DD who is actually in special ed for dyslexia, dysgraphia and severe CAPD (plus ADD), was tested at the speech clinic at my college and scored in the 99% for visual memory and visual patterns. She just blew me away!!

She did real well at the doctors. She did not cry but for a second after the drops. Then she took the tissue wiped her eyes and handed it back to the doctor.

She later said, "Doctor Wei put da wader in my eyes. Dr. Wei is nice." This really floored me because one, I only mentioned the doctors name in passing, and two, that was all her own language. I never said anything like that, prior.

She turned 22 months a couple of days ago. That sounds so old. Where did my baby go? I have to say that it is not that odd to hear her speaking. Her intonation is poor; her pronounciation is sometimes only understood by trained ears; she tends to repeat herself over and over. She still sounds like a baby.

But, like have said before, it is not the length of sentences or the vocabulary that is so striking, but the complexity of the ideas expressed.

A cute thing she just started doing is 'reading' her books. She starts at the beginning and turns each page and says a sentence or two about each picture. She was doing this in the book store last week, and everyone thought she was the cutest little thing. I was proud because she thought for a second and then correctly identified a violin. When did she learn that?

Oh, and I let her go "nakid baby" before and after bath every night for about 15 minutes. In that time she must have peed in her little potty. I found it the next day. Then, that night she pooped in her potty without me even knowing during her nakid time. She came to me limping because there was poo on her foot. I am not ready for this.

DS2 (28months) learned how to count to 10 this week. He rattles off the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 7, 8, 9, 10, 7, 8, 9, 10... Basically though if there are more than 6ish objects to count he loses track.

He's obsessed with Star Wars. He's got me reading the Clone Wars books to him every night. He knows character names and characteristics of each one. He calls all the Clone Troopers, Storm Troopers, and Droids "booming guys" because, you know, they boom. (They're the ones with the guns.)

He uses his Star Wars figures and other small toy robots or animals to act out elaborate scenes and stories. The characters interact and have long conversations, usually about individual characteristics but sometimes more imaginary concepts.

He's drawing amazing things. He's figured out how to paint with watercolors to produce really bold color and not have the colors bleed together. Yesterday he painted a rainbow octopus, and some really neat abstract stuff. He also drew a toucan the other day, including the striped beak, and a bird including wings and tail and beak. His drawings are getting more and more detailed. Last week he drew "the earth, saturn and venus with a bunch of stars."

He LOVES to make jokes and play with words. Unfortunately he also loves inserting potty words into any comment. What did you do today? "POOPOO!" Asynchronous is a good way to describe him.

I need to stop looking at the development tracker sites. DS2 is doing things many 4 year olds aren't supposed to be doing yet. It does put things into perspective though when I see his 3yo cousins who are right on track developmentally.

Mama to two crazy boys (8/05 & 9/07) and happy wife to one wonderful hubby.

What a lovely sense of the melodic line and phrasing he has already. Nice playing!

Miranda

Thanks so much!! This is what every teacher keeps telling us... both DH and I are both math nerds, but definitely enjoy classical music!!

DS also had a wicked busy schedule for the next month and a a half-- 3 recitals, 3 orchestra performances, 2 jazz band concerts, a music competition, 3 auditions for various youth orchestras and ensembles. And a performance at his composition professor's studio of his viola/piano sonata--Z will play the viola part. And final exams in music theory and cello performance.

And he won first place in the math olympiad contest at his school to the joy of his parents!

So, now we're doing multiplication. I need to find a dry erase board we can hang in the bathroom, b/c his favorite time to do math is while pooping. I think I will even let him have an adult marker since the wall paper in the bathroom is ruined anyway, he torn a big chunk of it down a couple of weeks ago (I think I mentioned already that the degree of asynchrony ATM is really crazy .)

Timmy's Mommy WARNINGyslexic typing with help of preschooler, beware of typos

DD made up a little song about numbers last night before bed. It's sort of a version of one two buckle my shoe (which she recently learned). We sang it a few times, going up to 10, and then the last time at the end she added a big finish: "1 2 3 4 5 6 7-- 8 9 10-- WHAT ABOUT 11?"

Yesterday she was playing with our neighbor's kids and showing the baby how to draw with chalk on the easle. She says, "You can draw HIGH or LOW, in the middle, or all around you go!" demonstrating the whole time. She's like a walking Dr. Seuss books sometimes.

She turned 3 and just keeps saying amazing things and making up amazing games. And she still forgets 15 half the time when she's counting What IS it about 15 and 16 with these kids? Too funny.

She's super excited about the new baby and talks to my belly every day and kisses it and then says proudly "I'm being a GREAT big sister right now!" She also likes to comfort me when I have m/s, patting my back and singing the song I sing to her when she's sad/hurt, but to me: "Iiiit's okaaaaay, Sophie's got ya." My big girl!

We took dd to kindergarten round-up at the local public school yesterday. We've decided to cobble together a full-day kindergarten experience for her by taking her to her Montessori in the morning and public school in the afternoon. I think this will fill a lot of her needs but know it is going to be a crazy year for me.

In our district the stand-alone GATE program starts in First Grade after testing in kindergarten. So we wanted to get her in the door even though she'd mastered the kindergarten curriculum as of her 3 year old year.

The class looks lovely. There was a kitchen area, a dress-up corner, a sand table...it was bright and the teachers were sweet. It's our hope that she'll have an old-fashioned kindergarten experience where she gets to play and socialize and plant things in Dixie cups. (Meanwhile, she'll be learning on level at Montessori in the mornings.)

During the round-up the children went down to the kindergarten rooms and the parents went to the library to listen to the principal speak. (It lasted about an hour.) A good 20 minutes of the speech was about red-shirting and how wonderful it is. The rest of it was about the importance of reading to your child. As I am a children's librarian, you can just imagine how novel that was to me. [/sarcasm]

When I went to collect dd the teacher raised her eyebrows at me and said, "DD is really smart." I later gleaned from dd that they spent a lot of time doing informal assessments of the children.

I'm hoping that public school doesn't turn out to be a mistake! I worry about dd learning to coast...